Templates for Managers.

A curated set of 17 files for the person who actually has to write the review, run the one-on-one, and have the conversation — with no HR business partner to call and no per-seat platform to log into.

The hard part of managing is the writing and the conversations

Almost nothing on a manager's list is hard because the decision is hard. By the time the review form lands you already know the rating — you have known for months. What stops you is the blank box underneath it, and the knowledge that whatever goes in that box will be read by the employee, read by HR, and read again in a year by somebody who wasn't there. So it gets filled with the words everybody reaches for the night before the deadline: detail-oriented, great attitude, needs to be more proactive, has real potential — sentences that can't be checked, can't be repeated on purpose, and give the employee nothing to do differently on Monday.

The fix is behavior-based feedback: describe the work, not the person. A performance-review phrasing bank gives you 189 competency phrases (243 in all) organized by rating level — structurally different language at Exceeds, Meets and Needs Improvement — each printed with the specific count, date, artifact or consequence it obliges you to produce, plus a five-slot builder that assembles the summary paragraph. Ten of its rewrites are 10 free review rewrites (PDF, no signup), and it's worth reading how to write a review that holds up and how a bank compares to an AI review generator before review season starts. For the rating itself — weighted criteria per role, the distribution across the team, and a calibration read that catches a lenient or strict rater — the Performance Review & Calibration Workbook is the companion file. Decide the rating there; write the paragraph in the bank.

Between review cycles, the thing that makes review week a writing job instead of an archaeology job is a running record. A one-on-one kept in a 1:1 Meeting & Goal-Tracking Workbook logs each meeting, carries action items forward until they're closed, and flags who you're overdue to meet with — four lines per person a month, and the evidence is already there in March. Keep that file where only you and HR can open it: notes on a named person's performance are an employee record. Point the whole team at the same quarter with OKRs in an OKR & Goal-Setting Workbook, instead of a per-seat performance platform.

Hiring and onboarding are the other two conversations nobody trains you for. A structured interview asks every candidate the same questions and scores them like-for-like, and an interview scorecard & question bank ranks your slate on evidence rather than on who interviewed best. Once the hire lands, a 30-60-90 plan maps their first three months into goals, owners and check-ins. And to know where your team actually stands ability by ability — for development, promotion, or the case for a hire — a competency matrix and a skills matrix put it on one grid, with a 9-box grid for the talent review.

One caveat that matters more here than anywhere else on the site. These are templates and general management guidance — not legal advice, and not HR advice for your organization. What a performance-improvement plan must contain, how much notice a written warning requires, and what documentation supports a dismissal are set by national, state and sometimes local law, by your own handbook and contracts, and by any collective agreement you're party to. Take proper advice before you write any review that will support dismissal, demotion, a formal warning or a pay decision, or that touches a protected characteristic, a disability or accommodation request, leave, or a complaint an employee has raised.